Rating: 
Summary: More than Full, Rather... Overstuffed
Review: This seems to be the age of the huge novel. Everything from horror and techno-thrillers to this nominal 'novel of character' can't seem to be told in less than 700 pages. Perhaps it's a reaction to the minimalist school, but when carried to excess, it severely detracts from the power an impact a novel such as this should have. Wolfe introduces his primary character of Charlie Crocker with immediacy and bright coloration, painting a fine portrait of a self-made real-estate developer who is egotistical, arrogant, crude, politically incorrect, charismatic, and utterly convinced of his ability to surmount any obstacle. A little deeper in, and Charlie's problems begin to come to light: severe money problems from an over-optimistic real estate development, with his major loaning bank starting to put the screws to him, his young second wife and his son by his first marriage start to put a crimp in his uncultured red-neck pastimes and speech patterns, Charlie's own fears of just possibly getting to be 'over the hill'. All intriguing and well-presented. But surrounding Charlie is an in-depth portrait of modern-day Atlanta, and it is here that I began to see problems with this book. Wolfe is not happy unless he describes every character's (no matter how minor) physical characteristics and dress, every scrap of furnishing in every room, every building (right down to who the architect was), every lawn and garden, till I felt I was drowning in all these set pieces, while the story action stalled. His second major character, the antithesis of Charlie in terms of money and social position, Conrad Hensley, is making his way downward in social strata, from warehouse laborer to unemployed to prison inmate. The sequence of events that lead him to this position is a great parody of life - absolutely everything that could possibly go wrong does. Most of the book that is told from Conrad's viewpoint seems more 'alive', more real than the sections dealing with the upper crust of Atlanta, although perhaps there is too much emphasis on street and prison slang. Clearly these two characters are meant to come together in some way, though separated by a continent and just as large a social distance, and at the same time the issues of race and political strategy that permeate the Atlanta scene must be folded into the mix. It was here I found more objections to this novel than ones of mere wordiness. Charlie; Wes, the mayor of Atlanta; Martha, Charlie's former wife; Roger Too White, the lawyer 'defending' the black football star; Roger Peepgass, the minor executive at Chalie's bank - all of these characters seem to have no central guiding principle, are willing to compromise on anything, and have no moral compass other than keeping up appearances, almost the exact opposite of an Ayn Rand novel. The only person who seems to have some inner principle is Conrad, who at least in the beginning can't express it well. But while in prison he is introduced to the ideas and commentaries of the Stoic philophers, and accepts their philosophy as his own. All well and good as a nice diametric opposition, but now Wolfe gets carried away in trying to present his 'message', and brings in a very out-of-character and unbelievable conversion of other characters to this philosophy. I felt this spoiled a lot of what had been up to this point a very believable 'slice of life' portrait of the both high and the mighty and the low and feeble. There are some fairly sharp satirical sequences here, such as both 'inner thought' sides of a date between the definitely not-young Martha Crocker and Roger Peepgass, and the strength of characterization keep this book from falling into the realm of 'impossible to read'. But the badly structured introduction of philosophy and the totally excessive wordiness defeated its attempts to be something more than just another novel of everyday living. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Rating: 
Summary: Fell apart near the end
Review: A must read for anyone involved in real estate. Some of the chapters excellently portray certain aspects of the industry (ie: Saddlebags). Parts of the plot fall apart and it gets little Sci. Fi. near the end.
Rating:
Summary: MODERN MORALITY TALE
Review: Enjoyable all the way through, and let's be honest a book has to be that. It was a story of people's lives and not just Charlie Croker. It was "Dickensian" in the sense that it contained large moral themes and took in the lives and sub plots of many characters, each edging slowly towards one another. In some sense it took on a religious feel with two characters obtaining a conversion and then "spreading the word". There were irritations: the obsession about dressing up and the fine eye detail on shirts, jackets, shoes, socks etc... and the banal emphasis on the accents, with Wolfe spelling out the the way the words were said as an echo after each sentence....plainly ridiculous!! Also the emphasis on muscles and physical strength were constantly put before us....please...Tom...we got the message in the first few chapters! But a superb read, entertaining and thoroughly deserving of the time and effort needed to get through so many pages. It was not just a story about America but of the human race.
Rating: 
Summary: An "American" Tale
Review: Wolfe's tale of the intersecting lives of ambitious men strikes the poignant chord of striving for improvement that is America. No matter what our station in life, most Americans are dreaming of something grander than what they currently possess. We are forever letting go of the bird in the hand for the two that are in the bush. A Man in Full thus is very much like Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby and Gaille's recent (2002) The Law Review, all of which explore the price that Americans pay for ambition.
Rating: 
Summary: Pales in Comparison
Review: Although I bought this book some time ago, I held off reading it for the fear that, following Wolfe's previous novel, "The Bonfire of the Vanities", it was bound to be a disappointment. Possibly I set myself up, but sure enough, I thought that "A Man in Full" pales in comparison. The plot is centred on the property mogul Charlie Croker, and his decaying empire - Croker is presented with a way to recover his fortunes, but it's a Faustian dilemma he's faced with. We have here the main underpinning elements of "Bonfire", only reprised in a Georgian, late 1990s environment - the clash between the pursuit of money and moral rectitude/justice. Racial and social tensions are explored (yet again). I thought that Wolfe might have been trying to examine the effects of what he perceives to be a breakdown (or restructuring) of American capitalism and society in the 1990s - the disintegration of sectors of the economy under an increasing burden of debt - the result of over-optimistic speculation in the past - and the effects this has on all sectors of society (those at the top, middle and bottom, of all races). This would all be very interesting had I not felt that I was getting a retread rather than a new tyre. Having said that, I found that there was plenty in "A Man in Full" to keep me entertained - Wolfe has a wry, sardonic humour and the plot is pacey, if at times a bit too "Dallas-esque". In all, then, not a bad novel, but not up to his previous effort, which I suppose in a way makes me regard the "Bonfire" in an even higher esteem.
Rating:
Summary: A Societal Vista
Review: This book is a vista, tying together many currents of society: 1) The dynamics of Atlanta and surrounding communities, 2) Life within African-American culture, 3) Boom-town developers and their genetically motivated underpinings, 4) The economically unsuccessful and their adaptations, 5) Political refugees from Asia, 6) The unremitting drive for the pursuit of status beyond any pretense of meeting basic needs, 7) Societal wars. This is a big vista, skillfully rendered. The ending is abrupt. Tom Wolfe himself said he didn't know how to end this appropriately, which shows. Yet the ending did appeal to me in its whimsicalness. A heck of a book.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: A MAN IN FULL is author Tom Wolfe at his best, which is to say: Brilliant. As a social historian, there is no one better than Wolfe. He details his stories with an abundance of background detail that add to these stories' success in ringing chords of truth. Wolfe also is a satirist, noting and then puncturing the bubbles of pretension that permeate every stratum of society. A MAN IN FULL is a vast novel, almost Dickensonian in its scope. It crosses the United States, in the process touching on many of the subcultures and social classes which now reside within our borders. Wolfe never loses his pitch, crafting a plot in which every one of the multitude of detail pulls together into a cohesive whole. He keeps the reader engrossed to the final page.
Rating: 
Summary: Over The Top Flop
Review: Simply, the longest cartoon ever. There is no grit here, just bluster and farce. Frankly, the story just isn't very interesting (even before it gets silly)and Wolfe must have realized that at some point in the writing, necessitating his shift to anexaggerated narrative that simply never gains traction or provokes any empathy for any character.
Rating:
Summary: More fuel for the Bonfire
Review: If you liked the earlier Tom Wolfe, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic, The Right Stuff, but were unable to finish Bonfire of the Vanities, you might be able to plow through Wolfe's latest, but only if you have a week at the beach and truly nothing else to do. This is more social commentary on the level of Vanity Fair or the New Yorker. Interesting character development but reliant upon various dei ex machina to bail those characters out of implausible situations. Believable only if you think Fox TV would devote a weekly TV show to a fatuous cracker spouting Epictetus.
Rating:
Summary: Great Until the End
Review: This was a really great book. I couldn't put it down. The characters were very well developed and I felt that I knew each one very well in the end. However, the ending was bizarre. I was disappointed in the last 100 or so pages (it is a very long book). It was almost like Mr. Wolfe just got tired of writing it, so he threw in a quick, sort of goofy ending just to be done with it. I would read something else of his, though because I did enjoy the vast majority of it very much.
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